topagraphy

The sounds you hear in your head (hopefully) are me shooting at the hip while trying to learn Portuguese. Through trial and error and research, I’m figuring what works best for me.

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“But Dad, if his wife is Brazilian, why does he come to our house?” The son of my language exchange partner asked his father (and you may be asking yourself too). 

He replied, “Because son, families are complicated.” 

When I heard this I chuckled, and it’s entirely true.

Language is not a walk by yourself, but rather a long arduous journey through many seasons, across peaks, valleys, and rivers that you have to rely on the kindness of strangers, courage, and possibly the payment of merchants to get to your destination. 

It is likely impossible for most people (I am not a fan of broad definitive statements not backed by statistics) to learn a language (see: read, write, converse) without engagement from third parties. This is entirely different from other endeavors: if you want to lose weight, great – eat less and go to the gym. If you want to learn statistics, great – here’s a book you can read. If you want to understand how personal finance works, here are a thousand poorly written best sellers that say the same thing. 

Learning a language can be a burden on the person teaching. There needs to constant input and feedback to the person learning the langauge, and honestly I wouldn’t want that burden on anyone that’s not teaching their own child to speak. 

My wife, or minha mulher if you will, and I tried numerous times to incorporate Portuguese into our daily lives, hoping the meu amor, bom gia, and selectivley saying pratos, chicara, or couloir would magically translate into full sentences over time. It did not. And I would say the vast majority of my friends that have a partner where English is their second language are in the same boat. 

It’s extremely tough, and honestly pretty sad to wonder how much of your partner’s true self you are missing due to translation. While I think my wife is hilarious most of the time, she swears she’s funnier in Portuguese, but that’s why God doesn’t give snakes wings. 

So, where to begin with learning? 

I highlighted in my previous post that I would like to achieve B1 Proficiency, which can require 300-400 hours of study, or let’s be honest, more depending on how you study. The definitions, per Wikipedia of this level of proficiency, are below:  

• Can understand the main points of clear standard input on familiar matters regularly encountered in work, school, leisure, etc.
• Can deal with most situations likely to arise while traveling in an area where the language is spoken.
• Can produce simple connected text on topics that are familiar or of personal interest.
• Can describe experiences and events, dreams, hopes and ambitions and briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans.

Now, that’s a lot of hours, and a lofty goal with barely being able to say “Oi, tudo bem?” and replying without sounding like an idiot. However, our first two-three months of our trip will be spent in Brazil. I have the luxury of being surrounded by the language on a daily basis. While I would not say I’m fully immersed, as we have friends here who speak English, about 70% of my day I’m surrounded by Portuguese. 

My first week was overwhelming as one could expect, but here is how I’m looking at progressing with this language. 

First, I set up benchmarks. Being a lifelong sales guy, it’s hard for me to not think in quarters and metrics. 

• Quarter 1 (December – February): Upon leaving Brazil, be able to communicate in a basic sense with people. Being able to understand what people say is more than being able to say it back is okay, and probably better, as you are hearing the breaks between words, sentences, and more. Be able to have basic conversations with my wife’s family about the weather, what you did during the day, what you’re doing this weekend, and what hobbies you have. These are repeatable conversations. 
• Quarter 2 (March – May):  We have a wedding in Portugal at the end of May (don’t worry, they’re Brazilians living in Portugal). I would like to have the confidence to both listen and have these basic conversations, and maybe engage in more complicated conversations about our travel with people at the wedding. I’d like to impress my wife’s friends with my level of Portuguese. 

How do we get there?  

Like anything else, consistency will be critical to seeing success. 

Here’s my daily regimen I will try to stick too. For simplicity sake, let’s break them up in even increments over either a one – two hour period daily. 

• Vocabulary: Focus on one or two irregular verbs a day (Ser, Falor) and proper conjugations across tenses. Choose 10 other vocabulary words across the spectrum of nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. Keep these in a handy-dandy-notebook as I have realized that notecards are not commonplace here in Brazil. 
• Listening Comprehension via Podcasts: I have found Lingua Da Genta – Portuguese Podcast: Lessons to be interesting enough, focused on small interactions you’d find in your daily life: Voce vem de onde? Com Licenca, onde e o banheiro? Understanding these basic phrases and being able to quickly process the information will be a critical element of obtaining an A1 foundation. 
• Rosetta Stone Lessons: Rosetta Stone was one of the first major players in self study of languages that included verbal and audio recognition and input. There have been numerous other players that have been more popular, Duolingo, Babbel, etc. that have done a better job at marketing, but when I saw the lifetime subscription for $199 from Rosetta Stone across all languages, I thought I’d give it a shot. I’m very impressed and my wife noticed immediate improvements in my understanding of Portuguese before we left the States. I’ve used Duolingo, and still use it occasionally, but I love the framework of Rosetta Stone, which incorporates listening, pronunciation, flashcards, storytelling, and more on a deeper level than I experienced on the other apps. 
• LanguaTalk AI Text / Voice Conversation: One of the first things I did when generative AI was released was attempt basic conversations in multiple languages with ChatGPT. While it seemed that it worked, there was no way for me to know if it was accurate, or translate what it was saying properly. LanguaTalk is a generative AI tool (not sure if it’s built on its own LLM or uses a third party – likely the latter), and it allows users to have an AI language partner using chat, audio, and voice. My wife tested the Brazilian Portuguese and she kept saying “This is so cool!” As she provided more and more complex questions to the platform. This tool also can provide real-time translations in your native language (ex: Portuguese first with English subtitles) and also correct your grammar in real-time.   

In addition to the daily regime, I’ll have recurring language exchanges and weekly goals to work towards. 

• Language Exchange: During my first few days in Indaiatuba, I posted to several local Facebook groups looking for a language exchange partner. Surprisingly, the person who replied was not a murderer (or let’s be honest, I haven’t found out if they’re a murderer yet – once you find out it’s over). In all seriousness, the person who responded is a nice father who is trying to improve his English for work in the tech field, which aligns nicely with my professional goals. His family is wonderful and they had us over for churasco initially to get to know us. Our cadence is to meet for an hour every Tuesday and Thursday for an hour, where I translate my week into Portuguese for the first 30 minutes, and we talk in English for the second 30 minutes. 
• Setting Weekly Goals: I think having small, measurable, attainable goals will be critical, especially to look at my progress when I’m frustrated. In the early weeks, these are going to be simple things: Understanding time & money, writing out grocery lists, Who-What-Where-Why-How statements, etc. 

Interestingly enough, I met some additional people who are open to doing a language exchange while at the gym. Learning a language has parallels to dating – you’re not just going to magically get a date or find a partner without putting yourself out there. I saw someone wearing a Penn State shirt, very odd for a city of 200,000 people in Brazil. I walked up and gave him my best “Voce vem de onde? Falor ingleis?” It turned out he did a soccer camp at PSU, hoping to get picked up for a scholarship at a university, and was back in Brazil teaching English, and his friends  currently are trying to learn English. Will we end up meeting up for a beer and practicing our respective languages – who knows, but you have to start somewhere. 

While hope is not a strategy, especially for learning a language, I feel like the framework I have put in place plus the support of my wife and her family will get me to a great place by February, and once I have some grounding under me I’ll start paying for a tutor to make it worth the money. 

With that, I’m off to the gym, or Eu vou para a academia. Boa tarde, tchau!